Mommy, I'm still in your uterus, but can I have a cellphone?

My kids don't actually believe this, but Frumpy Middleaged Mom survived most of her life without a cellphone.

Back in the olden days, when we were trudging miles barefoot through the snow, we couldn't text our friends. We couldn't even check our messages. We just had to use the time to do boring stuff. Like thinking.

My house monkeys, of course, have no interest in contemplation. For years, they begged me for their own phones.

By age 7, some kids at their school already had them. Still, I resisted. It seemed to me that a grade-school kid needed a cellphone about like a dog needed an electric blanket. Not unwelcome, but certainly unnecessary. Not to mention some recent research that's rather alarming about cellphones and brain tumors.

But, finally, last Christmas, after going to Toys R Us and finding it out of every single sale item I wanted to buy, I weakened and went to Office Depot and found a pair of reconditioned TracFones there for $9.99. The kind that you have to buy minutes to use. I bought each of the kids a phone and a card that gave them 60 minutes of calling time.

Take my amazing scientific poll here:

{democracy:27}

I thought, OK, that was foolish, but they will lose the phones or break them in about a week and that will be the end of it. I won't have to listen to their imploring voices anymore, because I can just remind them in my sternest voice that they had a phone but they lost it.

My best friend warned me of dire consequences. "You'll never be able to talk to them again, because they'll be on the phone all the time," she said. "It will be a nightmare."

I wavered, wondering if I was making yet another hideous parenting mistake. But I had already wrapped the phones with great care, in three different sets of boxes, to torture the little weasels when they had to open each layer, only to find another layer. I really wanted to see their happy little mugshots.

Yet, I almost felt guilty when I put the wrapped boxes under the tree, wondering if I was doing a bad thing.

Well, you can't imagine the indescribable joy on Christmas morning when they opened those boxes. It was like someone had just said they could live at Disneyland forever. Like Cheetah Boy had been awarded a Major League contract. Like Curly Girl got 12 pet dogs.

I was taken aback at their reactions. For the next day, they did nothing but play with the phones, study the phones, charge up the phones, pore over the manual, change their ringtones, play with the features, call each other for fun.

I had carefully explained, and they understood, that they only had a mere 60 minutes of calling time. And, once that time had expired, they would have to buy any additional minutes themselves.

Greatly to my surprise, they hoarded the minutes like an even more stingy Ebenezer Scrooge. I had expected them to call a friend and use up all the minutes the first day. But not a chance. Within a week, I realized that the kids wanted the cellphones not to communicate, but because they were status symbols.

Also amazing to me, the kids cherished their phones. They didn't lose them. They didn't break them. I'm using the past tense about the phones because, well, Cheetah Boy did leave his in his pants pocket and it got washed.

He had to buy the next one himself. Curly Girl, on the other hand, cared for her phone so lovingly that I agreed to buy more minutes for her after her time period expired, since she hadn't even used up the 60 minutes she'd been alloted.

The customer service for their Tracfones, however, was so abominable that I just decided we'd get rid of those phones, and get GoPhones from ATT instead.

The clerk at Radio Shack set up the GoPhones for the kids himself, instead of the long agonizing process of trying to set it up ourselves, so I was predisposed to like them immediately. I told the rugrats, if they hoard their 100 minutes I just bought them for $25, and they haven't used them all up, when they expire I will buy them more minutes. If they do use up their minutes, then they can buy them. Everyone seems to think that's fair.

So, I have a way to reach the kids in an emergency, they have their prized status symbols, and it's not costing me an arm and a leg. Plus, it's teaching them responsibility.

That is, when they actually have their phones. Cheetah Boy's phone is in my purse right now. This is the second time it's been taken away at school, and I had to go redeem it. This time, he lost it for two weeks. he swore he did nothing. But his gym teacher caught him texting during an assembly.

Sigh, he's almost 12 now. Like a bad acid trip, I feel it coming on and I can't stop it. Soon, he'll be like one of my colleague's sons and sending 40,000 text messages a month. And he'll go blind and his fingers will fall off.

If you would like to be on a mailing list to receive a link to each new Frumpy mom blog post, email me, mfisher@ocregister.com. I won't sell your address to anyone but porn companies that pay me a lot of money.

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